


Introduction to Coming Out

by arielmagicesi



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Coming Out, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, YouTube
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:53:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26485978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arielmagicesi/pseuds/arielmagicesi
Summary: Troy doesn't want to come out to his Internet fans until he's come out to one of his friends. Unfortunately, he's scared to talk to his friends after all this time away.Annie's not sure how to tell everyone about her big revelation that she's a lesbian, but she does know how to help her friends with their own romantic lives. Without talking about herself. Cause she doesn't need to talk about herself. Right?Two chapters about the two Resident Gays of Greendale coming out to a friend for the first time.
Relationships: Annie Edison & Abed Nadir, Annie Edison & Frankie Dart, Troy Barnes & Annie Edison & Abed Nadir, Troy Barnes & Britta Perry, Troy Barnes/Abed Nadir
Comments: 13
Kudos: 101





	1. Troy

**Author's Note:**

> notes at the end explain any potential plot holes, check there if you have any issues aaahhh

After two years of establishing himself as a Vine star turned YouTuber, Troy Barnes did what all YouTubers eventually do: moved to LA.

His new house was really nice. Being rich was awesome sometimes. He posted a video tour of his new place shortly after getting it. It wasn’t obscenely big, like Pierce’s house had been, but it did have a pool with a waterslide and a trampoline and enough space for a huge blanket fort. Well. Not a blanket fort. There wasn’t any point in building one by yourself, and Troy was…

All alone.

Levar Burton had stayed on the boat for a few months, but he _did_ have a life to get back to, and he realized pretty quickly that Troy wasn’t going to cheat. He’d helped Troy hire a professional sailor that they’d picked up at a port in the Pacific. The guy was great with boats, but not great with conversation, and the sea became lonely. Troy had had a lot of time to think out there. He figured he’d probably used up all his thinking powers for the rest of his life, but no, more thoughts kept coming.

A lot of thoughts about Abed. And a lot of thoughts about himself. Sometimes Britta, and Annie, and Jeff. About what it meant to be a man, and what it meant to grow up. About Shirley and what she would think of him. About Pierce, too. Pretty much everyone at Greendale got a long thinking session from Troy out at sea.

It was impossible to contact them. Not just because there was usually no signal out at sea, but even when they docked… there was no point. It would hurt way too much. And Troy was thinking too much. He was a different person than he’d been at Greendale, and no doubt all his friends were different people than they’d been, too. What if it didn’t work anymore? What if they’d all changed too much?

What if there really was something magic about the table, and once Troy had detached himself from it, trying to reconnect would mess with the magic?

And what if they didn’t miss him as much as he missed them?

So Troy was lonely. He met a lot of new people (he finally met his pen pal in real life, and got a photo signed by the newest actor for Inspector Spacetime), but mostly he was lonely. And when he’d finished sailing around the world, he spent a while renting a place in Canada and posting more of the funny videos he’d made at sea. Pranks, various challenges, bad puns, and his opinions on Star Trek and Kickpuncher. He started getting a following, and that following only grew now that he had consistent WiFi and nothing but free time.

Notably, no one from Greendale seemed to notice or care.

He made some Internet friends and they convinced him to move down to LA, where it’d be easier to grow his brand and make collab videos. So here he was, in his big empty house, with his expensive video equipment and nothing to do.

For a while, he lay in bed playing games on his phone. He’d hit a creative block. He posted a few vlogs but they weren’t very funny. Maybe this move was a bad idea. He didn’t have any more friends down there than he’d had in Canada. His fellow YouTuber friends didn’t reach out to him, and he didn’t reach out to them.

“Why doesn’t anyone want to talk to me?” he asked himself.

“What’s that?” asked the cashier. Troy was in the grocery store buying goldfish crackers, which he thought he might turn into a goldfish army.

“Oh, I said that out loud,” Troy said.

“Wait, are you Troy Barnes?” the cashier asked. “Oh my God, I love your Vines. They’re iconic.”

“Oh, uh, thanks,” Troy said.

She scanned another bag of goldfish and said, “Wait, rainbow goldfish? Are these for a video?”

“Oh, yeah,” Troy said. “No spoilers.”

“Oh my God, it’s none of my business, but…” She pointed again to the rainbow on the bag. “Does this mean…”

Troy froze.

“Haha, does this mean I’m making a Rainbow Fish homage with goldfish?” he said quickly. “Nah. If I was gonna do a video about a picture book with food, it’d be the Very Hungry Caterpillar. I would get lollipops, and cupcakes, and all the different fruits he eats in the book, and those sausages that come in a big string, and I would get one of those giant gummy snakes to be the caterpillar. Probably I’d have to go to a special candy store.”

“Ohhh-kay,” the cashier said. Troy had said all those ideas at top speed. “Uh, good luck with that.”

Troy wasn’t an idiot; he knew what she’d been insinuating. Some of the commenters on his videos posted stuff like, “troy barnes is a queer ICON! my gay baby” or “does anyone else ship troy barnes and danny gonzalez” or “yasss gay KING”. Those were the nicer ones- some people were more homophobic, and some people said stuff like “STOP SAYING THAT TROY BARNES IS GAY, HE’S MY FAVORITE VINER. NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO BE GAY SJWS…”

He ignored the comments, but a _lot_ of his fans liked to speculate about his sexuality. It was really annoying. He hadn’t ever said anything about being gay- he just didn’t act straight anymore.

He drove home and layered his living room floor in newspaper, trying not to think.

He hadn’t come out to anyone. Well, he’d told Bruce, the shark that had trailed the Childish Tycoon for a while that he’d become friends with, but he didn’t think Bruce had told anyone, he’d made him promise to keep it between them.

It didn’t really feel right to come out. His family already barely talked to him, and he didn’t really like them, so getting disowned wouldn’t matter much, but… it still mattered a _little_. And what mattered a lot more than his biological family was his real family, his Greendale family. How would they react if they knew? Jeff would pretend not to care, probably. Shirley… Shirley would…

Troy closed his eyes and let out a shriek of frustration. He didn’t want to think about Shirley. He went over to the cluster of grocery bags in the corner of the room and started unrolling blue Fruit Roll-Ups to layer over the newspaper. They’d make a perfect home for the goldfish army.

And he tried not to think about his old friends. But he kept thinking of them anyway.

The others were even harder to think about. It still stung that none of them had bothered to reach out. They had to know he was done with his boat trip by now, right? One of them must have seen his Vines or videos by now, right? Why did they pretend like he was dead or something?

Maybe because he never reached out to them, either. It was easier for him to pretend they were dead, too. That way the grief wouldn’t feel so out of place.

And he could maybe stand losing Jeff, maybe survive losing Shirley, but he couldn’t lose Britta, he couldn’t lose Annie, he… It would be easier to pretend they all popped out of existence than to learn that Abed didn’t want to be his friend anymore.

Not that he thought they were homophobic. It was more that they’d become friends with a different Troy. A Troy who was more concerned with what people thought than with being himself. Even after all the growing he’d done at Greendale, he’d still been lying a lot about himself by the time he left on that boat. Clone Troy was a completely different person now than original Troy had been.

Clone Troy wasn’t the Troy that the study group had loved. What if Clone Abed was different, too? Different in a _bad_ way. Clone Annie, too. It was never going to be the same and it was impossible and…

Troy looked up at his living room. The floor was methodically covered in blue Fruit Roll-Up, which looked great but was unfortunate, because Troy had accidentally surrounded himself in a sea of sticky candy. There was no way out.

“Great!” he shouted. “Lost at sea! _Again!_ ”

He crossed his arms and sat down to sulk. Absentmindedly, he picked up a Fruit Roll-Up and rolled it into a candy cigarette.

It had taken being lost at sea for him to realize he was gay. Not actually lost- his boat guide knew what he was doing- but he felt lost. They hadn’t seen land in weeks and hadn’t talked much either. Troy had climbed up to the deck one night and stared out at the sea and started crying.

Levar Burton, after spending three months hearing Troy talk incessantly about Abed, his Clive Owen Tumblr, dance class, and his failed keg flip, had left him with a few books and a goodbye that was weirdly insistent on how he would always accept Troy no matter what. Troy, confused, had read the books, which were some nice YA books about gay boys and a nonfiction book about queer history.

At first, he hadn’t put together that all the books were about gay themes. He thought Levar had just given him some random books. But the random books had got him thinking. Was it possible to pretend you were something you weren’t- to pretend it even to yourself? Troy, of course, had pretended to be a cool football star, and that had been so impossible that he failed the keg flip on purpose. So he knew a thing or two about pretending. But you couldn’t lie to yourself, could you? If you were gay, you knew you were gay. Or, well, if you were straight, you knew you were straight, at least. If you had dated and had sex with girls, you were definitely straight. And if you didn’t want to have sex with guys, you were not gay.

Troy had had sex with girls. OK… well… only two girls. He’d pretended about that too. There was his high school girlfriend, who’d really wanted to have sex with him. It had been okay. Then there’d been Britta. He pretended that he’d had sex with lots of other girls in between, but he hadn’t. Even the few girls who he’d met up with at Greendale had ended up abandoning him because he talked _way_ too much about Abed when he was supposed to be making out with the girl. That wasn’t gay, though, that was him just being awkward ‘cause he was trying too hard to be cool.

Being with Britta had taught him that he didn’t have to try so hard to be cool. That was why he liked her. And having sex with her had been nice. She’d been so patient and understanding- it felt safe. She was OK with trying weird things that might have scared off other girls. And she was happy to just watch movies and cuddle most of the time. She and Abed were the only ones who knew that Troy hadn’t had sex with all those other girls, because they were the only ones who didn’t seem to have any opinion about whether Troy was sufficiently manly. Even Annie had this idea that Troy was a _guy_ who liked _guy_ stuff, which included sex with women.

And he just wasn’t like that. He hadn’t been high school Troy for a long time. Maybe he never had been. He’d never liked guy stuff at all: football, being mean, bottling up your emotions, never crying, pretending to be a big cool adult, drinking scotch, sex with women…

Oh- shit. He didn’t like sex with women.

When Troy realized this, he read through some of the passages in the books again and realized that they were all about being gay. Hold on. Had Levar Burton thought he was gay? That was ridiculous. Gay people were _much_ more comfortable with their sexuality than Troy was. Just look at, say, the Dean! He dressed in women’s clothes, which Troy would never feel safe doing. He talked about men he found attractive, which Troy would never feel safe doing. Gay men got to date other men, which Troy would never do, because…

Because…

Huh. Why again?

 _Because that would be gay!_ shouted a chorus of voices in his head- Pierce’s, his dad’s, Shirley’s, his childhood priest’s, his high school teammates’, his own.

So there he was, staring out at the relentless swaying sea, the endless dark sky, and crying. By this point he knew. He could see how the next few months would play out, because it was how it always played out. Troy pretends he’s something he’s not, Troy fights himself, Troy hates himself, Troy knows he is what he is.

Abed accepts him without even thinking about it.

But Abed’s not here, so he’s stuck with thinking about it. And with nothing but the sea and the sky, he thinks about it a lot.

Oddly enough, thinking about Britta helped. She’d told him once, “you don’t have to be like that to be a man.” _Like that_ meaning like Jeff: cold, closed-off, emotionless. She’d let him cry and be weird and silly and love Abed more than he loved her. He was still a man.

And if this journey was supposed to make him a man, then he didn’t want to be Jeff’s definition of man. He certainly didn’t want to be Pierce’s definition of man, even if Pierce was the whole reason he was here. He cared about the two of them, but if there was anything he’d learned at Greendale, it was that he needed to avoid turning into them.

He wanted to be Britta’s definition of man. No, screw that: he wanted to be his _own_ man.

The longer he spent away from civilization, the more the concept of Troy emerged. Troy liked imagination and friendship and gentleness. He liked video games where you could shoot off bad guys’ heads, but he preferred video games where you could build a village of cute animal friends. And he liked himself.

He liked Finding Nemo, so when a shark started trailing after the boat, he named it after the shark from Finding Nemo, Bruce. In the morning, when the harsh sun was glinting white on the water and Bruce grazed the side of the boat, Troy said, “I’m gay.”

Bruce said nothing. Troy added, “Promise to keep that between us? I don’t think I’m ready to tell anyone just yet.”

Now it was almost two years later, and Troy still wasn’t ready to tell anyone.

Actually, he kind of was, though. He really, really wanted to tell people, because he wanted to be himself, wholly himself. It just felt weird to come out to a bunch of strangers on the Internet before he even came out to anyone he cared about.

But how was he supposed to come out to the people he cared about when he hadn’t talked to them in ages? The only people he talked with were a few YouTubers and sometimes Gilbert and the other people from Hawthorne Wipes.

Sitting in the middle of the Fruit Roll-Up ocean, remembering that morning on the actual ocean, Troy started laughing. ‘Cause he was doing it again: denying his real self. His real self didn’t avoid friends just because it felt awkward and terrifying. Well, okay, he was a bit of a coward, but he was first and foremost a friend. That was strong enough to make up for the fact that he hadn’t contacted them yet, that he’d changed, that they’d changed, that they hadn’t contacted _him_ yet, that things were weird.

He pulled out his phone and began typing in Abed’s number, then recoiled, like he’d touched a hot stove.

Maybe that was a little too emotional. He didn’t want to immediately start crying. Plus, for all he knew, Abed had a new number.

He went into his list of old contacts and looked up Abed’s number there, and stopped himself again.

Maybe it’d be easier to talk to Britta first.

He entered Britta’s old number into his phone and texted:

**Troy:** britta can we talk

 **(303)-761-7884:** this isn’t britta her new number is 303-808-0878

**Troy:** britta can we talk

 **Britta:** new phone who dis

 **Britta:** rick if this is you, I TOLD you to leave me alone!!!!

 **Troy:** no it’s troy

 **Troy:** troy barnes

Troy’s phone immediately started ringing- Britta was calling him.

“Shit, shit, shit,” he muttered, then quickly answered before he could think about it too hard.

“Troy?” came Britta’s voice over the line. Almost exactly how he remembered it, only real.

“Britta?”

“Oh my God, Troy! Holy shit, I didn’t know you were back on land! I can’t believe Annie didn’t tell me!”

“I, uh. I didn’t tell her yet,” Troy said, awkwardly.

“You called me before Annie? Aww!”

“I actually… called you before anyone.”

Troy heard the telltale sound of Britta holding back a more emotional sound, then her saying, “You called _me_ first?”

“Yeah,” Troy said. “And uh. I’ve kinda been back on land for over a year?”

“What? Why didn’t you call us? We missed you so much!”

“Sorry,” Troy said.

“No, no, oh my god, don’t be sorry. I bet you’ve been busy making a new life. What are you up to, what’s popping? What’s yeeting?”

Troy’s face broke into a smile. He’d missed Britta’s attempts to use slang.

“Well, I’m living in LA now,” he said.

“With Abed, huh?”

“What? No. I told you, Britta, you’re the first one I called. Wait, Abed’s in LA?”

“You… you really don’t know?” Britta said. “Wow, I guess- I guess I really _am_ the first one you reached out to. Um. I guess I don’t really think of myself as the one people reach out to. Uh, but oh my God, this isn’t about me; Troy! You have no idea how much we all missed you.”

“Not as much as I missed you, I bet,” he said. “It’s weird- I think I missed you so much that it made me not want to contact you guys.”

“Ah,” Britta said. “That is called separation anxiety. That’s when someone is anxious and it makes them separate from their friends. I think, anyway, I never finished the lesson on it.”

“Still a psych major, huh?”

“Yeah, how’d you know? Cause of my awesome therapizing skills? Troy, you can tell me anything.”

“Well, that’s kind of why I called you,” Troy said quietly, but Britta was already barreling on, saying, “I want you to know that it is _okay_ to take a while to communicate. Missing your friends is a difficult ordeal and it can be difficult to reach out, but I am proud of you for taking the first step and talking to a therapist.”

“Therapy student.”

“Whatever, same thing. Tell me everything. Did something traumatic happen on your boat journey? Are you experiencing ocean crazies?”

“No, I just… I don’t know, I guess I was scared,” Troy said. “I’m a different person, and you guys are different people, too. It’s been a long time. I don’t know if you guys will still like me now.”

Britta’s voice softened.

“Troy,” she said. “Everyone changes, that’s the way life is. But it doesn’t mean we’ll stop liking you. You’re still the same person.”

“Well… yeah, but… I’m not who you all _thought_ I was. You know?”

“No one is ever who people think they are. I’m not who everyone thought I was, either, but it doesn’t matter. Hey, remember when we both took that dance class?”

Troy smiled. “Yeah.”

“We were both scared to come out as dancers, because it didn’t vibe with what everybody thought of us. But it ended up being fine, right?”

“Yeah,” Troy said. “It did.”

“So you’re gonna be fine now, too. And I’m so glad you reached out to me.”

“I gotta tell you something,” Troy said. “I haven’t told anyone else, except this shark, but I haven’t told any other humans yet. But I need to tell somebody and you’re one of the most accepting people I know, so I think I’m gonna tell you. Is that okay?”

“Of course,” Britta said. “What is it?”

Troy took a deep breath and said, “I’m gay.”

There was a long, terrifying pause, and then Britta said, “You’re gay?”

“Yeah.” Shit, shit, what if he was wrong and she got mad after all…

“Oh, Troy,” she said. “Troy, I’m so proud of you.”

“You… are?”

“Of course I am.”

“Because I’m gay?”

“No, because you trusted me enough to tell me. Because you’re being honest with yourself and me. That’s really cool and really mature of you.”

“You don’t think it’s weird that you dated a gay man?”

“Come on, I lived in New York. And now that I think on it, this kind of explains a lot.”

“Yeah, I guess the butt stuff thing was a little obvious.”

“Oh, I meant… well, never mind.”

“What? What did you mean?”

Britta sighed. “Well, looking back, our relationship was always more about us being friends, which… honestly, I think I needed.”

“I liked being friends with you,” Troy said. “No, _like,_ present tense. We’re still friends, right?”

“Of course we’re still friends! Uh, as your friend, though, can I say something?”

“Oh, no,” Troy said. “What is it?”

“Relax, it’s not something bad. It’s just… You gotta reach out to everyone else, too. If you want, I can do it with you. Break the ice, you know. I think you need to talk to your friends again. Especially Annie and Abed.”

“Yeah,” Troy sighed. “I mean, I want to. It’s really hard, though. What if they’re mad at me?”

“Why would they be mad at you? They’re not homophobes.”

“Not ‘cause of that, I mean ‘cause I took so long to reach out to them. What if they don’t want to be friends anymore?”

“I don’t think it’s possible for them not to want to be friends with you, Troy.”

“But they didn’t even try to contact me,” Troy said in a small voice.”

“That’s… oh. Well- we thought you were still at sea.”

“None of you saw my Vines?”

“What’s Vines?”

“They’re like, small videos? I’m kind of a big deal on there. And on YouTube, too.”

“Well, I don’t believe in the normalization of social media infiltrating our lives.”

“Yeah, but Abed _does_.”

Troy hadn’t meant for that to come out so aggressively.

“Oh,” Britta said. “You mean that Abed probably _did_ see them, so he knew you were back on land, and you’re hurt that he didn’t reach out.”

“Yeah.”

Troy stared at the Fruit Roll-Ups surrounding him. He was probably going to have to eat his way out. He was not looking forward to the stomachache and sugar crash.

“You know, maybe Abed feels the same way,” she said. “And that’s why _he_ didn’t reach out.”

“Yeah, or maybe he realized he was always too good for me,” Troy said.

“Trust me, that’s not true.”

“You said he’s in LA now. That probably means he’s a big-deal filmmaker now, right?”

“Not exactly, he’s doing production work for this comedy show-”

“Exactly, too good for me. He was always gonna realize someday that he-”

“Troy, he’s in love with you!”

Troy stopped short.

“What?” he asked, his voice squeakier than he meant it to be.

“Oh God, I shouldn’t have said that,” Britta said.

“Um,” Troy said. “Did he tell you that?”

“No, I just… I mean, I _think_ he is. That’s what I meant when I said that you being gay explains a lot. Me and you were dating, and you and Abed were friends, but I think the actual truth is that me and you were friends, and you and Abed were dating.”

“Uh, Britta, I think I would have known if I was dating Abed.”

“Not _actually_ dating, subconsciously dating.”

“Britta, if this is something you learned in psych class, please remember that I don’t understand science.”

“It’s not from psych class! I mean that you guys are like, soulmates, even when you’re just friends. When you left, Abed was a mess. I think he just sort of threw himself into new, you know, storylines to try and deal with it. But you two belong together. Don’t you?”

“The world doesn’t actually work like that,” Troy said. “We’re not _really_ in a movie.”

“OK, well, maybe true love exists in real life, too. Take it from someone who’s been in a lot of terrible relationships- don’t let a good one get away just because you’re scared.”

“How do you know all this stuff?” Troy asked. “How did you know how I felt?”

“I’ve also been scared and in love and in my twenties, that’s how. Also, you’re not very subtle with emotions.”

“How do you know how Abed feels?”

“Well, nobody really knows how Abed feels, but I know you’re the most important person in the world to him. It’s worth it to call him. I can give you his number.”

“I… I’d like that.”

“And Troy, thank you so much for trusting me. I missed you.”

“I missed you too.”

When they hang up a little while later, after Britta tells him all about what’s happened at Greendale for the past few years, Troy looks down and realizes that he can just shift the newspapers out of the way and easily maneuver his way out of the Fruit Roll-Ups. Maybe some problems had easier solutions than he thought.


	2. Annie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I obviously had a lot more to say about lesbian Annie, due to being a lesbian myself lol. Let me know what you think in the comments!

_I am perfectly comfortable being uncomfortable with my sexuality!_

Ha. Yeah, well, that wasn’t gonna cut it anymore.

One of the first things she’d done after moving to D.C. was get a library card, so now, a whole one week into being there, she was walking briskly down to the local library to get ten different books about human sexuality.

Enough was enough. She was figuring this out.

She’d spent her last months at Greendale obsessing over the question that had always lived in her subconscious and had recently started bubbling to the surface like some sort of swamp monster. Abed would’ve been able to come up with an apt reference for a good movie swamp monster, except she hadn’t told Abed. She hadn’t told anyone. Oh God, she hadn’t told anyone, and that made it a _terrible horrible secret_.

She wasn’t quite sure when it started, really. It was like that quote from _Pride and Prejudice_ , she was in the middle before she knew it had begun. If she really thought about it, it had begun in middle school, when she’d made the terrible mistake of watching Mean Girls, a movie that she _knew_ was inappropriate for her age group, a movie which had that scene where Regina George accused Janis Ian of being a lesbian. Of not being able to go to a party where there were girls in their bathing suits there. Annie had replayed that scene in her head over and over and over again for months. She’d thought obsessively about _girls in their bathing suits_ and the word _lesbian_ and that led to dirty, inappropriate sex thoughts. So she came up with a solution: every time she thought about something sexual, she would write a tally mark in the back of her diary, and at the end of each week, the number of tally marks equaled the number of extra hours of SAT prep she’d have to do that Sunday.

Because if Annie thinking about something sexual meant Annie being a… not _being,_ just thinking those thoughts… about… _you know_ … friends of Ellen… Anyway, she’d come up with a solution and the point was moot and she made her way through all the SAT prep books at the bookstore.

It was like her whole life was split into categories in a binder, and she’d put her sexuality into a neat file folder that she’d then placed in a storage unit far, far away. And that was where she was happy leaving it.

Even after the rest of her life had fallen to pieces, and she’d had to rebuild everything from scratch and come to terms with the fact that her life was not going to go according to plan, she could always count on that file folder being in its box and not coming out. Ever.

Except that it did.

Being at Greendale had allowed her to have some actually healthy relationships with men, for once, which was a huge relief. There was a chance she was going to end up with a perfect, sweet, loving, caring boyfriend and eventually an idyllic marriage after all. Like Vaughn, who’d been on-paper perfect. Britta had liked him, which was a good sign that he was attractive and the kind of guy that sexy women liked. Annie was sexy, she was grown-up, and she was in a healthy relationship with Vaughn. He wrote her songs, gave her presents, listened to her vent about schoolwork, was always patient and kind. Even physically, he was endlessly patient and gentle, never doing anything she didn’t want to do. Which was good, because after the traumatizing disaster of her first time with her high school boyfriend, she didn’t even like _thinking_ about sex, let alone having it.

Yeah. Vaughn had been perfect, hadn’t he? And yet, on the ride to the airport, she thought about spending years and years dating him, and suddenly the cab was suffocating. She’d started hyperventilating, and Vaughn had asked the cab driver to stop the car and let them take a breather on the sidewalk.

“What’s wrong, mountain flower?” he asked.

Annie just kept hyperventilating.

“I don’t- I don’t- I don’t think I can do this,” she gasped, tears filling her eyes.

Vaughn hugged her gently and said, “You don’t have to. I think this is the universe telling you that you need to stay here. I thought that might happen, and I want you to know I’m at peace with that.”

“But,” she sniffled. “This was- this was supposed to be me being spontaneous. Me finally making a grown-up decision for once in my life.”

“Hey,” Vaughn said. “Annie, you don’t have to be spontaneous and grown-up. You can just be you. Sometimes, it’s OK for two dandelion flowers to be carried away on two different breezes. You feel me?”

Annie nodded, her breathing coming out evener. She knew this was Vaughn breaking up with her, which was supposed to be sad and terrible, but for some reason it just felt like a huge relief. Like how it had felt when her high school boyfriend called her in rehab and said that they should probably end their relationship.

Like, _oh, thank God, I can stop pretending._

But- it wasn’t like she’d been pretending to like him. She _liked_ boys, she liked them all the time. She’d been obsessed with Troy in high school, and she’d bought a Zac Efron poster in high school and methodically plastered it on her bedroom wall. She could spend hours daydreaming about boys, reading about kissing them in books and magazines, staring at them, imagining what it’d be like to be their wife. She just… kind of didn’t like dating them.

Which was why Jeff was perfect. Jeff was the perfect fantasy. He was a hot adult man. Annie knew he was hot, because he would say it often, which was very helpful, and he had sex with lots of women, or at least he said he did. He was a jerk with a heart of gold, just like Edward in Twilight.

Not only that, but she and Jeff were like star-crossed lovers. Torn apart by the forces of him being way too old for her and her finding him kind of gross. On top of that, once Annie found out that he and Britta had slept together, she found herself obsessing over Britta, overcome with jealousy of her obvious sexual prowess and the cute way she sang little songs under her breath and curled her hair. It was one of the romantic tropes, jealousy. She was learning a lot about romance tropes from Abed, and she fit every one of them.

She liked Abed, too. Her heart had raced during second paintball, when Abed had flirted with her as Han Solo and given her that breathtaking kiss. Annie knew herself, and she knew she was a hopeless romantic. She loved all the parts of romances: first kisses, sweeping music, romantic gestures, looks of longing. She just hated dating.

She thought she’d overcome her fear of dating when she started dating Brent Underjaw online. Dating Brent was easy and sweet. All she had to do was chat flirtily with him every so often, and he’d shower her in compliments and romantic notions that made her melt and hum and make pancakes every morning. Of course, that had just turned out to be Abed catfishing her. Finding _that_ out had made her spiral for a while wondering if she was secretly in love with Abed, which was crazy because she was also secretly in love with Jeff, and she really didn’t want to date either of them.

“Boys are _exhausting_ ,” she told Britta one day in the bathroom when they were both adjusting their makeup.

“Ha! Tell me about it,” Britta said. “I was chatting with this guy online for weeks about animal rights, and we didn’t even once bring up dating, but I was like, hmm, this guy really cares about animals, maybe I should ask him out? And then _right_ as I was about to ask him out, he sent me a picture of his dick and asked me if he could suck my _toes._ ”

“Oh my God, ew,” Annie said, putting a hand to her stomach to quell her nausea.

“Ew is right. You are _right_ , guys are so exhausting to deal with.”

“Honestly,” Annie said, her heart leaping into her throat out of nowhere, “sometimes I wish I was a lesbian so I didn’t have to deal with guys. You know what I mean?”

“Annie!” Britta said admonishingly, turning to face her. “Being gay isn’t a choice. You shouldn’t say stuff like that. It’s kind of homophobic.”

“Oh,” Annie said, her face falling. “Right. Sorry.”

She’d never really met any gay people in real life, so Britta was the main source of her knowledge about what was homophobic. Of course, her high school boyfriend had turned out to be gay, but she hadn’t known it at the time. And the Dean was… Gay? Or something? She didn’t think he was really representative of any group except for, like, the kind of crazy person that went to Greendale. Besides that, gay people essentially boiled down to people on TV, and there weren’t many of those.

That had changed when Frankie showed up. Annie was mesmerized by Frankie. She jumped at the chance to form a hate group against her, because she loved thinking about Frankie all the time. Frankie was impossibly cool, mature, sexy, exactly what Annie wanted to be like. When they started getting along, she and Frankie clicked almost instantly. She started having embarrassing daydreams about her, because Frankie seemed like the sort of woman… like maybe she was… like she knew a thing or two about adult sexuality… and maybe she was like one of those women that Annie had heard about who _experimented_ and maybe she would _experiment_ with Annie and… And that was where the daydream had to end, because this was so inappropriate.

Then the contents of her daydream had entered real life.

They’d been playing “The Ears Have It” with Elroy and gotten him to guess that he had elf ears.

“Like in Lord of the Rings,” Abed said. “Have you seen that movie?”

“Why wouldn’t I have seen that movie?” Elroy said.

“Because you’re old enough that you might have a loyalty to the book version, which has some key differences from the film adaptation.”

“Oh, I never read those books,” Elroy said. “Too long for me. I prefer digital media. I dated a guy in the 80s who loved the books, though.”

Everyone in the room stared. Elroy rolled his eyes.

“What, this is the part where everyone wants to know if it’s appropriate to ask about my sexuality? Is this my role in the group? Am I gonna be the guy people ask questions to about being Black and bisexual? Is that it?”

“No, no, oh my God,” Britta said. “I, for one, accept people from all walks of life. I lived in New York.”

“Yeah, if anything, Frankie’s the one who fits into the role of character with an ambiguous sexuality,” Abed said. “The group sort of seems fascinated with her sex life, or lack of one, whichever is accurate.”

“Dear God, Abed,” Jeff said. “No one is fascinated with Frankie’s sex life, because that would be creepy.”

“This coming from the guy who spent an hour yesterday telling me about his conspiracy theory that Frankie is a lesbian.”

“Wait, _what?_ ” Annie burst out, a little louder than she meant.

Everyone laughed, and she turned red.

“Leave it to Annie to not notice,” Britta said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Annie asked.

“It means that you can be naïve,” Britta said. “It’s not a bad thing, it’s just that, well, Frankie kind of gives off a lesbian vibe.”  
Annie narrowed her eyes. Wasn’t saying that someone had a “lesbian vibe” homophobic? She couldn’t keep track of Britta’s homophobia rules. Wasn’t this the same sort of thinking that had led her to befriending that girl Paige in sophomore year?

“It’s true,” Abed said. “Frankie fits a lot of classic stereotypes for lesbians. Uptight, controlling, frigid, and pointedly not interested in men.”

“Frankie’s frigid?” Annie asked.

“Well, she hasn’t flirted with me even once,” Jeff said.

Elroy groaned. “How have you people put up with this man for- how long have you been friends? Four years?”

“Five,” Abed corrected.

“Sure,” Elroy said, rolling his eyes, and the conversation turned to Elroy insulting Jeff and the rest of the group chipping in with ideas for creative insults.

Later that night, when Britta was out tending bar and Annie was idly reading in the living room, Annie tried to casually bring it up to Abed, who was heating up buttered noodles in the kitchen.

“Hey, Abed,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Do you really think Frankie is frigid?”

The microwave beeped and Abed removed his bowl, then walked over to sit next to Annie.

“No,” he said, after a pause. “I think she fits the character trope of the Ice Queen.”

“The Ice Queen?” Annie asked, rolling her eyes.

“Yeah. A woman in a position of power who’s portrayed as stoic and no-nonsense. She rejects the male protagonist’s sexual advances, leading him to characterize her as frigid. But her façade of toughness is usually hiding emotional depths.”

“Let me guess, the story ends with the male protagonist winning her over,” Annie said, staring down at the carpet.

“Sometimes. I think Frankie will subvert that version of the trope, though. I prefer when the Ice Queen rejects the male protagonist and goes for the trope of strong woman who doesn’t need a man.”

“Well, according to Jeff, she needs a _woman_ ,” Annie said, still staring at the carpet, her voice tentative.

Abed was quiet, then he added, “That’s possible, too. I’d like that.”

Annie looked up. “Why is that?”

Abed was looking at her, his eyes soft.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s OK to need someone else in your life. Someone you’re close to, maybe even romantically. Just not always a heterosexual relationship. I think TV has too many of those.”

“Yeah,” Annie said softly, and both of them glanced, almost involuntarily, at the wall of photos with Troy in them. Annie could feel dangerous realization swelling in her, and that needed to stop, so she said quickly, “Then you could apply queer theory to the romantic subplot, right?”

Abed’s eyes lit up.

“You read the book I gave you on film theory?”

“Most of it,” Annie said, smiling. “I didn’t understand a lot of the stuff about French New Wave cinema.”

“Tell me about it,” Abed said, and took a forkful of buttered noodles.

Annie went to bed shortly after, arranging her stuffed animals and pillows in the correct order, brushing out her hair, fluffing the blanket, turning off the main light and turning on her night-light. There was a soft bubble of safety in her stomach, the sensation that she was in a slightly imaginary place, like the Dreamatorium or something. Like she could figure out scenarios in her imagination without them meaning anything. Right?

So here she was, lying down in this imaginary place, the secret Annie in her head rising up and looking her in the eye. _Hello again,_ she said.

 _Hello,_ regular Annie said back.

 _So Elroy is bisexual, and Frankie might be a lesbian_ , secret Annie said.

_Seems like that’s the case._

_If that’s true, then anyone could be gay._

_I guess anyone could be gay, then._

_Even me?_

_I… I mean, anything’s possible… I…_

Annie tucked secret Annie back into her slumber, but unlike the other times she’d encountered her secret self, Annie didn’t forget about her this time.

She spent the next few months thinking about it. She was particularly intrigued by the notion of bisexuality. She’d vaguely heard the term before, sure, but she’d never really thought of it as a real thing. So Elroy was attracted to men _and_ women. When she Googled it, she found out the word bisexuality included other genders too. Wait, _other_ genders? Well, that made sense- she’d met a few people at Greendale that definitely didn’t fit into “man” or “woman”. So anyone… could be attracted to… any combination of genders…

Interesting. Academically, of course. Intellectually interesting.

And how did you _know_ which genders _you_ liked?

The question of “which genders does Annie like” popped around her mind for the next few months, irritating her but not taking up too much space. She was thinking a lot about who she was, anyway. She was beginning to feel like a woman, not a girl, like… someone else. No, like who she’d been the whole time, just not buried under layers of skirts and textbooks and pills and parents’ expectations.

She was the kind of person who could leave Greendale, who could apply to an internship that would take her away for the summer, and maybe longer. Hopefully longer.

After Garrett’s wedding, when Frankie had dropped them off at home, she said suddenly, “Annie- Annie, can I talk to you?”

“Oh,” Annie said, as Abed and Britta headed upstairs. She turned and stood at the edge of the sidewalk, next to Frankie, who was leaning against her car. “Yeah, sure, what is it?”

“I just…” Frankie ran a hand through her hair, and Annie let out a small breath. She was _not_ going to think about her inappropriate daydreams now.

“It’s tough for me to say this,” Frankie continued, “because it’s not really any of my business, but. You know how we talked about dragons at the party?”

“Yeah,” Annie said. “For the record, I think I’ll call mine Ariana Puffington after all.”

“Oh, uh, sure,” Frankie said. “But you remember what the dragon represented, right?”

Annie fidgeted with the edge of her dress.

“Helping people,” she said. “Well- not helping people- being sort of- sort of addicted to helping people.”

“You have worth,” Frankie said, “beyond what you can provide for other people. You know that, right?”

Annie didn’t answer.

“Annie, I… I know you love your friends, and it is good to have a good group of friends. Abed, for example, is a wonderful friend. And… Oh, this is not my place to say, is it…”

“Jeff’s bad for me,” Annie filled in for her.

Frankie grimaced. “He’s not… a _bad_ person, per se. I just think he’s encouraging some unhealthy habits in you.”

“Yeah,” Annie said, biting her lip. Her eyes were getting slightly teary. “I think I’ve known that for a while.”

Frankie sighed.

“It’s a _good_ thing that you want to help people,” she said. “But- and mind you, this is me extrapolating based on my own experience- I know that for me, when I used to help people like Jeff, it represented chasing a fantasy I didn’t even want.”

Annie looked up sharply.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“To be subservient,” Frankie said. “That’s intoxicating, because it means being useful. But it’s not even something you want, is it?”

“But I do want to be useful,” Annie said.

_I do want to be a girl to a boy._

“I _do_ want Jeff.”

“Wait, hold on, you want Jeff… in a romantic sense?” Frankie asked.

“Oh, not really,” Annie said, crossing her arms. “I… oh God, you’re right. Jeff is a fantasy I don’t even want. And it feels good to want him because it’s safe. But I don’t even want that anymore. I want…”

_To feel what it’s like to kiss a girl._

“I want to want things I want,” she finished. “Not things that it hurts to want. Not people that it hurts to want, and then I get to, I don’t know, feel all better when they give me a little recognition.”

_Not people that it only feels good to want because you’re supposed to._

_Not men that you don’t want because you don’t want men_

_but you’re a girl so you’re supposed to_

_not want that you want because it feels good to want the right things_

_to be the right kind of girl_

_to be good enough_

Frankie was smiling.

“Can I-” she began, and Annie kept going.

“I want- oh, sorry-”

“No, keep going.”

Annie smiled.

“I want to figure out what I want,” she said, “and find people who can help _me_ with that for once. Not that I don’t want to help others anymore. I just want to do it for the right reasons. And I want to think about me, too.”

Frankie’s smile widened, and she said, “Can I give you a hug?”

“Of course!” Annie said, and Frankie hugged her.

She spent an hour after that thinking obsessively about being bisexual, specifically the part where she’d be allowed to be attracted to women.

She thought about her conversation with Frankie on the flight to D.C., which led her to thinking about being attracted to women _again._ God damn it!

That was it. She was going to figure this out. Did she like men, did she like women, did she like both, did she like more, did she like neither. Enough already. She would figure out the answer before the plane landed, and there was an easy enough method: look around at the other passengers. Her seatmate was a 30-something businessman in a nice suit. She glanced up and down at him- well, look at that, she was checking him out. Attracted to men. She looked at the flight attendant coming down the aisle with the drinks cart, whatever, fine, don’t look at her, what about that man over there with black curly hair? Oh, she’d love to run her hands through those curls. Attracted to men! What a relief!

That was a fun game, so she spent the next hour or so judging the appearance of everyone on the plane. By the end of the hour, she had her conclusion: she’d spent far longer deliberating over the men’s appearances than the women’s. She was straight. Oh, she was straight. Oh God, what a relief.

Because this whole thinking-she-might-not-be-straight business was wreaking havoc on her productivity.

It was resolved.

Until she arrived at orientation for her internship two days later and her eyes landed on a gorgeous woman sitting across from her and she lost her breath.

_OK. Not so resolved._

So now she was here, with a stack of books on sexuality and a free evening- she’d finished all the extra work for her internship early, determined to focus on anything but the drumming, sparking feeling shooting through her, on anything but this incandescent awakening, and when she’d finished all her work she couldn’t take it anymore, and now she was reading _Stone Butch Blues_ and _Fun Home_ and _Nice Jewish Girls_ and it was a week later and it was 2 AM and she was in a tiny apartment in the heart of the sweltering summer of the capital of America and she was questioning whether she wanted to be in the FBI anymore and she wanted to date women and she wanted to kiss women and she wanted to fuck women and she wanted to scream at her parents and Jeff Winger and her younger self and everyone in the fucking world.

In the morning, she downed a huge cup of coffee and put on a sharp pantsuit and held her hair behind her head, imagining it short. She’d never allowed herself to cut her hair short, because she hadn’t wanted people to say she was a lesbian.

She went into the office, where she went through files and followed her supervisor around. It was duller work than she’d imagined, but she enjoyed learning about digital intelligence gathering- she wanted to learn ways to find out the dirty secrets of the world, to turn over the rock of secrecy and expose the wriggling systems beneath.

Like she’d done with herself.

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes and felt the air conditioning on her skin, and forced herself to focus on the case in front of her.

At home, she watched gay movies on Netflix and cried a bit and occasionally masturbated, which was much more pleasant now that she just let herself think about women. She could do this. She could be a…

A…

She didn’t have to say it, did she? She could just think it. She didn’t have to _tell_ people.

It was a few months later, in November, when she’d accepted an entry-level job at a newspaper and a part-time job at a coffee shop to cover the rest of the bills, that she got a text from Abed.

**Abed:** Call me when you get out of work.

 **Annie:** Is something wrong?

 **Abed:** Not exactly. I need advice.

Luckily she only had half an hour left in her shift, so she just forced down her worries until she got out and quickly headed back to her place, where she opened her laptop to video-call Abed.

She could tell right away that something was off. He had that quiet, heavy look, like he was filled with serious thoughts.

“Abed, what’s going on?”

“You should sit down,” he said.

“I’m clearly sitting down,” she said, gesturing to the chair behind her.

“I know, but that’s what people say in movies when they’re about to deliver shocking news.”

“You have shocking news to deliver? Abed, just tell me what’s going on.”

“OK. Troy called me.”

“ _What?_ ” Annie exclaimed. “Oh my God. Oh my God, Troy’s back? Troy’s back! Tell me everything! Oh my God, tell him to call _me!_ ”

“I will,” Abed said. He still looked heavy. Annie’s shoulders fell.

“Did he… say something?” she asked.

Abed shrugged.

“I’m calling you because you know about feelings and feelings aren’t really my thing, but I think I’m feeling the wrong thing,” he said.

“Abed, there’s no such thing as wrong feelings.”

“OK, but when you found out Troy was back, you got excited. When I found out, I… I told him I would call him back later. After I talked to you. I made sure to tell him that I was talking to you so that he wouldn’t feel like I was just abandoning him, because Troy knows that sometimes my feelings get weird, but what if this Troy doesn’t?”

Annie tilted her head. “What do you mean, _this_ Troy?”

“Clone Troy.”

“Ohhh,” she said. She’d almost forgotten. Her first instinct was to tell Abed that cloning wasn’t actually real, but she didn’t say that. She considered her words carefully. “Abed, you know that clone Troy… you know… OK. Do you remember the alternate timelines?”

“Yes,” he said, visibly tensing.

“OK, well, I think that there could be an infinite amount of timelines-”

“Multiverse theory.”

“Multiverse theory, right, and I think that in every single timeline, Troy would care about you and understand you.”

“But how do you know that for sure?”

“Because that’s how we are. You and me and Troy, and to some extent the rest of the group, too. We love each other. That doesn’t change.”

Abed considered this.

Then, in a small voice: “But he left.”

Annie sighed.

“He didn’t leave because he wanted to leave _you_ ,” she said.

“I know that,” Abed said. “He left because he had to find himself. It’s the hero’s journey. But the hero doesn’t come back the same. He hasn’t even… We haven’t even talked in over two years. He’s been gone.”

“That doesn’t mean he doesn’t love us,” Annie said.

“But what if I don’t love him anymore?”

Annie put her hands to her mouth.

“Abed, what do you mean?” she asked.

He looked away.

“Abed, what are you saying?”

He ran his hands over each other.

“I spent two years,” he said, “pretending I was fine. I spent two years being Abed without Troy. I… This is really hard to say.”

Annie nodded and said softly, “You can say anything you need to.”

Abed swallowed.

“You know… you remember when I showed you how the Dreamatorium worked? About how my life was before I met you guys?”

“Yes.”

“And how that changed when I met all of you?”

“Yes,” Annie said, her heart clutching.

“It was because of Troy. I mean, it was because of all of you, but most of all it was because of Troy. Troy was… Troy was like my other half. Like the ancient Greek story about people originally being attached to each other and then being split up. Have you ever heard that story?”

“I’ve read it,” Annie said. “Abed, are you saying that Troy is your soulmate?”

Abed nodded, closing his eyes.

“I don’t even think soulmates are real,” he said. “I know they exist in fiction, but I think that’s an example of a damaging romantic trope that leads people to seek out an unhealthy ideal. But I think there’s such a thing as people who make each other’s lives make sense. That’s what Troy was, and then he left. And I spent so much time working to become the kind of Abed that never even knew that Troy existed, because it was the only way to survive him leaving.”

Annie suddenly gasped.

“What?” Abed said.

The swell of realization had come to the surface. _Abed was in love with Troy._

Wow, she had really underestimated how gay the group had been, huh?

“Abed,” she said delicately, because she knew how tough it could be to accept this kind of truth. “I know this might be difficult to accept, but just be open-minded, OK?”

“Sure,” he said, his eyebrows furrowing.

“Have you ever considered that you might be bisexual or gay?”

“Oh. Yeah, I have. I’m bisexual.”

“Wait, what?” Annie said.

“Bisexual. Attracted to more than one gender. Why are you bringing this up? Is this relevant?”

Annie’s hands dug frustratedly into her chair.

“You already knew?” she said.

“Of course I already knew a fact about my own self. Why wouldn’t I have?”

Annie glared out the window.

“I don’t know. For some people, realizing their sexuality might be, like, something that takes years and is really difficult, but I guess it’s… Probably… I’m glad it was easy for you, that’s good.”

“It wasn’t easy,” Abed said. “People can be rude about it. That’s why I don’t generally tell people unless they directly ask, like you did.”

Annie let out a sigh. She knew it wasn’t fair to get mad at Abed for something this petty.

“Why _did_ you ask?” Abed continued. “It seems random.”

“Oh, right,” Annie said. She’d almost forgotten their earlier conversation, but she shifted back into gear: this was about Abed and Troy, _not_ her. “Well… because I think you might be in love with Troy.”

“Oh,” Abed said, softly. His face fell a bit.

“I know it might not be my business,” Annie said.

“It’s OK,” Abed said. “But you’re not telling me anything new. I know that already. It’s hard to ignore that you’re in love with someone when you’re fully acting out a waiting-for-your-beloved-to-return-from-the-sea trope.”

“Oh, Abed,” Annie said. She wished she could hug him.

“What if we’ve been apart too long?” Abed asked. “What if we meet up and nothing makes sense anymore?”

Annie stared at her hands.

“You’re saying that you’re scared,” she said, after a long pause.

“Of course I’m scared. I’m scared of hurting him. I’m scared of losing him. Or losing myself.”

“Yeah,” Annie nodded. “You’re scared that the future isn’t going to look like you thought. That you aren’t going to be what you were supposed to be. That…”

She closed her hands around themselves.

“Abed, there are two options. You can lie to him and to yourself, or you can tell the truth. The truth is a lot, lot scarier. It opens up so many scary possibilities. But it’s who you are. You can’t hide from it. Eventually it’ll come to get you somehow.”

“What do you mean?” Abed asked.

Annie looked up, back at Abed’s face on the screen.

“I mean, be brave,” she said. “Loving Troy is part of who you are. Be true to that. Call him back and tell him. Come on,” she added, smiling, “haven’t you ever seen a movie?”

“Callback to what Shirley said at the Sadie Hawkins dance,” he said, and smiled, too. “You’re right. Life isn’t much without taking risks.”

“Yeah,” Annie said. “Exactly. Now go, call him!”

“OK,” Abed said. “Wish me luck.”

“You don’t need it, silly. I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Talk to you soon,” Abed said, and hung up.

Annie let out a long breath. Those two were going to be the death of her. Oh, it had been a while since she’d had _that_ thought, and she missed it.

She went to lie down on her bed. Her mind was racing: Troy was back, Abed came out to her, Abed was going to confess feelings to Troy.

She was jealous. Which was dumb. But she was jealous. Abed was just able to say that he was bisexual, as if it was nothing.

_Take your own advice. Be brave. Tell the truth._

“Oh, shut up,” she muttered to herself.

Then she grinned, got up, hoisted open her window, and scrunched up her eyes. Her apartment was up relatively high, her roommates were out, and the street below was filled with shouting and honking.

She opened her mouth and shouted to the city, “I’m a lesbian!”

For Thanksgiving weekend, Troy surprised Annie with round-trip plane tickets to LA. She met him and Abed at the airport. Britta, Jeff, and Shirley were coming as well, but Annie arrived a day earlier.

She raced over and wrapped both of them in a group hug.

“Aww, you already got your luggage from the spinny thing,” Troy said. “I wanted to go watch the luggage come off the spinny thing. It’s the coolest.”

“I’ll text Britta and ask her to get you before she goes to baggage claim tomorrow,” Annie said. “Now come on, let’s go to your house! I already saw that video tour but I want to get the in-person tour, too.”

“Well, it’s changed a lot since I made that video,” Troy said. “Me and Abed actually decorated the guest room just for you.”

“Awww, you _guys!_ ” Annie squealed. She hugged them again. “So, what, are you two living together now?”

“Yeah,” Abed said. “I was concerned at first about the potential dangers of moving in too early in a relationship, but then I remembered that we already lived together back in the apartment.”

“The only thing that would make it complete would be if you moved back in,” Troy added.

“I told you, I’m happy in D.C.,” Annie said.

She’d been taking online forensics courses to finish out her degree, and she was already up for a promotion at the newspaper due to her extra work doing background investigation on political corruption. As much as she loved Troy and Abed, she wouldn’t trade her work for living with them.

When they got to the house, Troy and Abed showed her around. Her heart swelled with happiness seeing them together. It was a bit like old times, only without the repression. Troy didn’t hesitate to wrap his arms around Abed whenever possible, and Abed would occasionally drop kisses on Troy’s head, making Troy stutter and smile.

She knew they would understand her. After all, they always had.

“And now, the guest room, or as you can call it, Annie’s room!” Troy said with a dramatic flourish as he opened a door down the hall from his and Abed’s room. Annie peeked in and her eyes widened.

It looked extremely comfortable, a lot like her room back at the old apartment, with lots of pillows and soft blankets. Hanging from the ceiling were golden letters spelling “WELCOME ANNIE” and on either side of the letters were a rainbow flag and a lesbian flag.

“You accidentally shared your Google Slides presentation with me,” Abed said.

Annie slapped a hand to her forehead.

“Oh, God,” she said.

She’d made a slideshow explaining that she was a lesbian, complete with video links, citations, poetry, and animated effects. She’d kept waiting for the day when she would be ready to share it with her friends.

“Oh my God,” she said. “I was trying to check if it was a shareable document. You mean…”

“Yeah, you clicked Share,” Abed said. “I didn’t want to embarrass you by telling you, but we wanted to make sure you knew that we support you.”

“And that we love you,” Troy said. “You’re our Annie. I’m just…” He put a fist to his mouth. “I’m just really happy that you found yourself.”

She realized she was grinning.

“What did I do to deserve such good friends?” she said.

“Being Annie,” they said simultaneously.

“Now come on,” Abed said. “We ordered a pizza and there’s a bunch of movies I want to show you.”

Annie followed her friends down to the living room and for the first time in maybe her whole life, she let her true self settle gently around her shoulders and rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> notes:  
> -I know the timeline is probably weird, just roll with it  
> -I like the concept of Annie being an investigative journalist  
> -yes, Annie considers being bisexual while she's questioning and ends up realizing she's a lesbian, which is a thing that happens, but to be clear I know that bi women also exist. I just think Annie's just extremely lesbian  
> -by the way my headcanon is that Abed ends up working on the TV show Crazy Ex Girlfriend, hence his take on soulmates not existing

**Author's Note:**

> Some caveats:  
> -I love Annie and I know that Annie would instantly accept Troy as gay, but Troy is nervous and is more convinced that Woke Britta would be easier to talk to  
> -Levar Burton is a real human being so I felt weird writing him as a character, hence why he left the boat early in this fic. I had him give Troy the books because I figured it was just a generic "nice adult realizing this kid is gay, want to help" thing  
> -I don't know anything about boats, sharks, filmmaking, how rich people buy houses, YouTubers, etc. I picked Danny Gonzalez for people to ship him with because he's the first YouTuber that popped into my head and I think Troy would probably post similar content to his, you know, funny stuff  
> -yes Troy would be a Vine star. he invents DancePants in 2019, remember?  
> -I know Britta said "you don't have to be like that to be a man" in an alternate timeline, but I think she still had that conversation with Troy in the main timeline  
> -I Googled "random Colorado phone numbers" so I don't know if those are real people's numbers


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